Last August, a controversy erupted in the gaming world over a relationship between reporter Nathan Grayson, who works for gaming magazine Kotaku, and game developer Zoe Quinn. Gamers have been demanding Grayson be fired for giving Quinn’s game a positive review.
To add fuel to the fire, feminist Anita Sarkeesian claimed that Quinn was attacked not for her blatantly unethical manipulation of journalism but for being female. Not only that, but Sarkeesian has begun a quest to create feminist propaganda against gaming in general.
Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter project entitled “Tropes v. Women in Video Games” to fund her “research” for a video series. She acquired approximately $160,000 in order to explore how the gaming culture supposedly contributes to violence against and objectification of women.
One of the major shortcoming of her project is that there are no actual studies mentioned in her videos, video descriptions or website. Her website simply has links that take the viewer to blogs, Amazon to order feminist books books and interviews.
These sources cannot replace academic studies to validate Sarkeesian’s claims.
Another feminist argument against video games is that women are not widely represented as protagonists. Gaming has been a male dominated market for a while, so of course, there are more male characters.
This is simply a case of how the free market works. There are plenty of female-dominated markets, such as fashion magazines. If a gender makes up the majority of a certain market, it makes sense that the market will cater more to that gender. Even with a male-dominated past, modern gaming has begun to reach females.
Games such as Mirror’s Edge, Destiny and Resident Evil franchise feature females that play significant roles. However, feminists simply dismiss this and say that these types of games are uncommon.
It may be true that more games feature men, but games featuring females are certainly not rare. Another excuse feminists use is that the women in games are there to satisfy the sexual urges of men.
They complain how women are objectified in games as sex objects, but men with lean and muscular bodies are featured throughout the entertainment industry. However, this is left out to make women seem like victims.
One game that Sarkeesian accused of being sexist was Hitman: Absolution. She showed a segment when a player killed multiple strippers and dragged the bodies around.
The clip showcased makes up a very small percentage of the game, and the objective of the game is to be a hitman, and hit the target, not to kill women. Outlast is one game that features males having their genitals mutilated; this “objectification” is not exclusive to females.
And more often than not, men are the victims of violence in games; this does not mean games are sexist toward men. On the other hand, when a woman is subject to violence, feminists assume that the game is sexist.
As a matter of fact, the game penalizes the player for killing civilians. The majority of players do not play the game by killing innocents, and it is extremely difficult to find a popular video game where the player simply kills women, assuming that such a game exists.
The only way Sarkeesian could have found that kind of video would be to have someone purposely play the game in an oddball manner.
The stories accusing gamers of being sexist do not seem to account for the fact that gamers donated $71,496 to the Fine Young Capitalists (well over the $65k goal) to help women make video games for charity.
All of this is part of an effort to avoid being slapped with a another false label by people like Sarkeesian: “misogynistic.”